


sentimental (over you)

by newsbypostcard



Series: Getting Sentimental [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Music, tws missing scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8407270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newsbypostcard/pseuds/newsbypostcard
Summary: Steve's lips scan close over Sam's neck and maybe it's that music cracks them both open; sends the awkwardness of flirting straight out the window, and makes room for this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> There's a [really great piece of meta on tumblr](http://newsbypostcard.tumblr.com/post/152032466411/since-everyone-else-gets-to-wax-poetic-about) about how Steve is inexplicably at ease around Sam and has probably, by the time he and Natasha show up at his house after Camp Lehigh in TWS, been to his house at least once before, so consider this a filler scene. I also just really love music in fics as a device for increased vulnerability and I bet Sam's knowledge of music is _encyclopedic_ , so here we are. I have had no formal piano training myself, so pretend what I wrote is accurate (my best friend in high school played religiously though).
> 
> Ella Fitzgerald singing "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8jGrqHjRmg); singing "Then You've Never Been Blue" is [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBIDvYbewow).

  


A little known fact about Sam Wilson -- retired Airman of the EXO-7 program, modestly decorated, now spending his time working part-time with veterans while he figures out what comes next -- is that he's also an accomplished jazz pianist. Ten years working through the Suzuki method and another four after that unlearning the rigidity of technique, and piano had started to fall by the wayside just as he was getting good. Never forgotten but often neglected, it was something that always brought him to a feeling of coming home: to sit down in front of the keys and test his feet experimentally against the pedals.

The VA center has a piano in its basement.

Sam looks at it every day. He sits down in front of it much less often.

He finds he's more likely to acquiesce to the need to play when he's had a strange day -- after a therapy session drags something up, or when Sam stands around in the empty hall and gets the sneaking suspicion he's never done anything useful a day in his life. 

When Steve fucking Rogers shows up at the VA centre -- though Sam had been dead certain he never would -- he decides it definitely qualifies as a strange kind of day.

He sits down at the piano and stares at it a while before setting his fingers against it.

Something happens to Sam when he sits down on that bench. Something within him seems to crack open, like honesty is unavoidable here. To put fingertips to the cold veneer of the keys is to give something up; to allow himself to lay bare, to give himself over to the cadence of the sound.

He plays a few testing chords against the keys -- an F, an E7, C, then back again--

"Never thought I'd fall," he sings, under his breath, "but now I hear love call…"

Of course, Sam thinks, Steve fucking Rogers himself _would_ just happen to come back when he's playing a love song on the piano.

For a second -- just for a second -- Sam freezes, muscles locking in low-key horror. It's been a long, long time since he's played the piano in front of anyone, and to be playing in front of the only person to make him feel like--

\--Well--

"Hey," Sam says, saving himself from his own train of thought. He withdraws his fingers from the keys, unable to prevent himself from feeling like he's been caught in the middle of something. "You forget something?"

"No," says Steve -- and here he is again, _Steve Rogers,_ tall and gorgeous and someone who could seriously give Sam a run for his money. "I felt bad," Steve says, and tries to flash a smile. "I think I left our conversation kind of awkward."

Sam takes his foot off the pedal and half-turns toward him, still seated on the bench. He hadn't realized he was sustaining the note until it stopped resounding in the room. "Nah, man. I understand. What's smooth about responding to intense personal questions? I felt bad too. You didn't have to answer all that."

"I wanted to," says Steve. His eyes linger on the keys; he leans in the doorframe, seems to regard Sam with sorrow. "I interrupted."

"No," says Sam.

"Clearly, yes," says Steve. "Wish I was sorrier. It was beautiful."

"Nice of you to say. I'm out of practice."

"I actually know that one. Tommy Dorsey, right?"

"Very possibly. I only know Ella Fitzgerald."

Steve's eyebrows steeple high on his forehead. "I've heard of her. She was around when I was, even. Didn't get famous until -- after, though."

"Jazz classic. Can't beat her. Another one for your list."

Steve nods thoughtfully, but he doesn't take his notebook out. Maybe he doesn't have it on him all the time. "You know a lot about jazz?"

"Used to." A crook to his lips. Steve responds with one of his own. "You're not the only one with a patent on having a past."

"Never claimed I was."

"Guess I just don't carry it the way you do."

Steve doesn't reply to that. After a tense beat, Sam puts his hands back on the keys and starts in where he left off.

"I'm," he sings, and then diverts his eyes to avoid tracing the curve of Steve's lip with his eyes as he plays, "getting sentimental over you…"

It's easy enough to remember, especially with his eyes watching his fingers place themselves over intervals so easily, effortlessly, as though driven by a force outside himself. Sam finds himself suddenly taken by the sound; he shuts his eyes, moves his hands without looking, and reduces his voice to a hum as the music washes over him, takes him away from here.

He is distantly aware that Steve is moving out from the doorway and into the room, but he doesn't know where until Steve props his fists on the bench on either side of him.

Sam's eyes peel open. He tries to slant his gaze to the side, tries to see him standing there behind him, but is met only with Steve's breath on his neck. He isn't touching him, he's inches away, but it's sensual, _god_ is it ever -- there's no doubt about that.

Sam slows his hands; lets his foot drag a little against the pedal.

"You're good," Steve says in his ear.

"Yeah," Sam agrees, and nods. "You gonna show me how this is done, too?"

"Couldn't if I wanted to. Not a musical bone in my body."

"I doubt that. You just haven't tapped it yet."

Sam feels him smile, somehow. "How long it take you to learn how to do this?"

"Fourteen years, intensively. Been another decade since then." His fingers transition easily into a different song, _Then You've Never Been Blue,_ and he shuts his eyes against it again and lets his blood pump through him -- lets the music seduce him. Lets Steve Rogers seduce him. Even though he knows he probably shouldn't.

Steve's lips scan close over his neck and maybe it's that music cracks them both open; sends the awkwardness of flirting straight out the window, and makes room for _this_. Sam finds he's grateful; leans back against the feel of breath against his skin.

"Am I being too forward?" Steve says, tracing a line across sinew with his mouth alone, from ear to shoulder.

"No," says Sam.

Steve nods and puts his mouth whole and hot on Sam's neck, and Sam breathes in like he needed it. Maybe he did. "Keep playing," Steve says. 

Sam is hard-pressed to do anything else if it means he gets _this_. It's been a long damn time since he's felt this way.

There are some things Sam has figured out since Steve ran past him on the National Mall. 

The first is that no man runs that fast unless there's something he's running _from_ \-- not even if he can do it without even breaking a sweat. That's why Steve's here, now, he assumes -- looking for something to take his mind off whatever it is he doesn't want to think about. Sam's just the recipient of his efforts, lucky or otherwise. The question is whether he's gonna let himself be caught.

The second is that this is, in a way, _kind_ of a third date, if being trounced at running and ditched for national duty counts as one and intensely personal conversations in the lobby of the VA counts as another.

The third is that no one goddamn takes a tiny notepad and pen with them on a run for any reason he can possibly think of, unless he planned to have a conversation about what was different this century. Sam's better off not even _trying_ to think about his running route.

Steve Rogers is incredibly fucking hot no matter what shit he's pulling, anyway. Sam would have to be an idiot to ask questions.

So the fact that he is right goddamn here, breathing in the notes he's playing like they're what's filling his lungs, shouldn't do anything to Sam except exactly what it's doing. It seems as reasonable a conclusion as anything else. Steve's lips brush against Sam's neck and then his hands are moving off of the bench, nearer to Sam, investigative and inquisitive.

If Sam has repeatedly featured in the Steve Rogers distraction extravaganza lately by something like an accident, he's discovering he doesn't really mind all that much.

One of Steve's hands is under his shirt and pressed wide over his hip, the other pressed into a fist by his thigh, still supporting him against the bench. He mouths affections against Sam's neck almost in time with the music, or half a beat behind, and it's _stupid_ what it's doing to him; a crescendo of another kind.

Steve's fingers, gentle, at his jaw.

It's then that Sam finally stops playing and goes where Steve leads him.

He keeps a foot on the pedal when Steve's lips brush against his because that seems to be part of it, that seems to be what brought Steve _here_ \-- music that he recognizes, that makes him feel as cracked open as Sam feels to play it, and so the chord resonates warm and Sam shuts his eyes because it's all so fucking _soft_ and it's what he needs today, and if this is the last time he sees Captain America then at least he'll have a story for life. He tenses a hand at Steve's neck and brings him in and kisses him deeper and it's the swell of a melody, the slow crash of a falling phrase. 

Then the heat of him is gone and Sam is left swallowing while Steve withdraws. His foot falls of the pedal, then, as Steve straightens to standing.

"Okay," Steve says, and then looks at him smiling faintly. Sam thinks it might be the first honest expression he's ever seen on his face. "I have to... go. Right now. Will you be here later?"

"Oh." Sam blinks. "I, uh… I don't know. Probably not."

"Okay, well. Can I find you at home?"

And Sam is bewildered, he is fucking confused, but a second later he's writing his address out on some scrap of paper and handing it to Steve goddamn Rogers, and Steve's fingers brush against his as he takes it, gentle and kind and enough to make him fucking shiver.

"I'll see you later," Steve says, and then he _leaves,_ as sincere and abrupt as he's ever been.

Sam does not understand what the fuck just happened, but he'd bet good money he's about to never see Captain America ever again.

  


  


  


There's a knock on the door four and a half hours later, and Sam is as shocked as he'd expected to see Steve Rogers on the other side.

"Hi," says Steve. He's got his hands shoved in his pockets and this hint of a smile on his face and it looks sincere, again, and Sam would swear he's changed his shirt.

He's not having this today. "Hey," he says back, and leans against the doorframe with crossed arms.

Steve correctly interprets his suspicion and smirks to the floor. "How are you?" he asks, looking up again.

"I'm great," Sam says lightly. "Having kind of a weird day."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"Made out a bit with Captain America."

"Is that so?"

"Unsure about what's going on there. Not so clear on his motives. Disinterested in being another notch on a superhero's bedpost, so feeling a little suspicious about the whole thing, you know?"

The gentle mockery falls off Steve's face. "Is that what you think?"

"Isn't that what you superhero types do? Show up and take what's yours? I know Tony Stark."

"Whoa. _Sam._ I am _nothing_ like _Tony Stark._ " He must hear what he sounds like, though, because he adds a second later, "I'm not like that, Sam, I swear it."

"Right. You're different from the rest. Never heard that before."

Steve's brow cocks, as though expecting a story, but then he shakes it out of his head. "Okay -- listen. I, uh…" He looks off to the side, and there's that smile again -- the only thing that's looked like it's belonged on his face since Sam's met him. "I didn't expect what happened today. If you're not interested, that's fine, I accept that, it was worth a shot. But… to be perfectly honest with you, Sam, I haven't been on a date in two and a half years." He shrugs. "If you're interested in having one, I... don't mind keeping my hands to myself if it means assuaging your concerns."

Sam's eyebrows raise. Worse than anything else, he thinks he believes him. "Didn't you come out of the ice two and a half years ago?"

Steve smiles, but it's turned sad again. "Yeah."

"So you broke out of the ice and rolled right into the club, is that it?"

Steve grins; looks to the sky. Pink hints at his cheeks. "Put those in a different order and you got it."

"So, wait -- you haven't had a date since 1945?"

"1944, actually. Well -- before?" He scrunches up his face, as though in regret. "Have I ever had a proper _date_? I might not have."

Sam blinks at him. " _You?_ " he says harshly, and gestures at him.

"You seem to be misinformed as to what I'm about, Sam," Steve says. He nods out the door. "I'm happy to explain. We can go in, or go out, or we don't have to do anything if you don't want. But I figured I'd better ask properly before I catch you playing the piano and get disoriented again."

Sam's brain feels suddenly slow to catch up; his heart beats, loud and stupid, in his ears. "You're asking _me_ out on a date," he says, as though this is news.

"Yeah."

"The first date you've had in seventy years?"

"Well… yeah. You got a problem with that?"

Sam blinks. "Hell, no. Just impressed with your impeccable taste."

Steve's smile breaks wider. "I've been told to suggest we go for a drink."

"Is that where you went just now? To go look up how to ask someone out on a date in the 21st century?"

"Less 'look up' and more 'check with a friend who's been pushing me to date for a while,' but yeah."

"How's a guy like you narrow in on _me_ as your prime date candidate?"

Steve shrugs, again shy. "I don't make connections that easy. Doesn't take an idiot to see we got one in spades."

This, somehow, explains everything. "All right," Sam says, nodding. "All right, Mister Modernity. We can go out if that's what you want, but then again, there's always the other option."

"The other option being?"

"We skip all that and jump right to the part where we fuck on the piano bench."

Steve's smile is slow to crest over his face, but when it does it's both knowing and glad; and so Sam steps aside and sweeps his hand as though to guide Steve in.

Steve steps forward, hands still in his pockets, and holds Sam's eye as he steps inside.

Sam's pushed him up against the wall, laughing, before he's even got the door closed.


End file.
